Links for Tuesday May 4^th, 2010

• People of class drink alcohol: Based upon my drinking habits, I'm apparently a "Extreme Conservative" Southerner with poor word talking skills and little education. Sounds 'bout right. (via Daring Fireball)

• A good problem to have: Some whip-smart writing from Mike Davidson. The entire article is great, but I'd like to highlight this passage:

  "...I always remember thinking wishfully to myself that if Apple ever did rule the world again, what a fantastic problem it would be. Instead of having our future dictated to us by a company who didn’t even care enough to fix a broken web browser for over five years, we’d have our future dictated to us by a company who produced the most wonderful products in the world. The dream seemed so far-fetched, however, that it was easy to miss the potential for nightmare in it."

  I've been thinking about this a lot, but Mike sums it up better than I ever could. (via Daring Fireball)

• May The 4th Be With You (Gaining An Appreciation For The Prequels): As works of art, it's hard to deny the greatness of the Star Wars Prequels.

• MobileMedia's Unusual Patent Infringement Campaign: This is pretty weird. Apple contributes patents to MPEG-LA, and in return licenses patents, so it can provide H.264 on its products. MPEG-LA, in turn, has a subsidiary, MobileMedia, which owns a bunch of patents, and is now suing Apple for patent infringement.

  Can we just reform the lousy patent system yet?